Chatter

CEMENT OVERSHOES DEPT.: When it comes to wheeling and book dealing, megaseller Sidney Sheldon doesn't make many false moves. Then again, neither does Frank Sinatra's very unauthorized biographer, Kitty Kelley. At a party in Los Angeles, Sheldon bet Kelley that her tell-all exposé, His Way, would sell at least two million copies. Invited to name the stakes, Kelley elected round-trip first-class airfare from Washington, D.C., where she lives, to L.A. for a Sunday night dinner at a restaurant of her choosing. If Kelley's book didn't sell two million (thus far, one million copies have been printed), Sheldon would keep the date, but Kitty would pick up the check. Poor Sidney knew he'd walked into a no-win wager when Kelley announced the restaurant: Matteo's, an Italian celebrity haunt frequented on Sundays by Frank Sinatra and pals. "Oh my God," exclaimed Sidney. "Either way I have to walk in that place with you!" Chivalry isn't dead, Justin hiding.

CHILD ABUSE: Seth Green, 13, who plays Woody Allen's radio-fixated alter ego in his nostalgic movie Radio Days, has wanted to be an actor ever since he began fighting his way out of the playpen. His mother, Barbara, a math and computer science teacher in Philadelphia, told Newsday, "Seth being in show business is his own idea. At 6½, he told us we were wasting the best years of his career. He made a phone call to a relative who was involved in casting and said, 'Help me. They won't take me to auditions.' "

MISTER SOFTEE: G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate conspirator now on the lecture circuit, says his two appearances on Miami Vice were a snap. "That's because I exclusively play villains. It's rank typecasting," Liddy claims. How would he assess the chances of other Watergate alums making it as thespians? "Ehrlichman had quite a lot of personality, so I suppose he could," says Liddy, "but I'm afraid that the first time it rained, John Dean would melt. Dean is best characterized as water soluble."

YES, BUT HOW DOES HE LOOK IN HIS CALVINS?: Keeping namesstraightcan be so taxing when you're Supermodel of the World. Selected for that honor last year from contestants representing 22 countries, Canada's Monika Schnarre, 15, was plenty excited, you bet, when she learned she had been invited to Moscow to help launch the first Western-oriented fashion magazine in the U.S.S.R. But the straight-A 10th grader was a little confused when she heard she would meet Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "Can I tell you a secret?" Schnarre confided. "I don't really know who he is."

STRAIGHT LINE: When Harry Hamlin, now happily paired with Susan Dey on L.A. Law, was getting ready for his role as a homosexual novelist in the 1982 movie Making Love, he visited several gay bars to see "how they moved and how they picked each other up." He says he was approached by a few would-be partners, one of whom was particularly persistent. "I finally had to say, 'In fact I'm researching a movie, and I'm doing some research here,' " says Hamlin. "He just looked at me and said, 'That's the fifth time I've heard that line this week!' "

BACKHAND RETURN: Tennis ace Boris Becker wasn't on the dais at the North Miami celebrity roast of aging bad boy Ilie Nastase, so he could observe the rites with a certain detachment. While japesters like Vitas Gerulaitis and Jimmy Connors fired off the sort of strained crudités that leave most roastees less than well-done, Becker, 19, observed the grilling—his first—with bewilderment. "I have never been to anything like this before," he said in tones of amazement. Would he like to try his hand at the spit? Nein, the defending Wimbledon champ replied firmly. "I'm not at the age of giving up the game yet. When I'm 40, maybe I'll be a roaster." Better that, at least, than a capon.